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Mister Maker, Mister Maker

Recently Stu was given a code to try a Mister Maker craft box for free. As it was costing us nothing we decided to give it a shot.

For those lucky enough not to know, Mister Maker is a slightly annoying CBeebies presenter (although I’m told that’s not his real name!) who hosts an art and craft show...think noughties Art Attack for preschoolers. Charlotte loves watching the programme, although we haven’t gone down the slippery slope of recreating any of the projects at home yet.

Once ordered, the free craft box arrived pretty quickly. The craft materials are perfectly packaged so they fit through the letter box, and Charlotte absolutely loved that it was addressed to her.

This particular box was garden themed, with all the stuff you needed to make two bumble bees and two dragonflies. I saw straight away that we’d only been given three pairs of wings, rather than four, but we had all the rest of the required materials.

The instructions were straightforward and easy to follow. Charlotte obviously needed me to read them to her, and she needed a little help twisting pipe cleaners and peeling backing paper off glue dots, but everything else she did herself.

Although marketed as a craft activity we got much more out of it than that. We talked about colours and shapes. We counted the beads as she threaded them, which also used her fine motor skills. We talked about patterns. We discussed bumble bees, dragonflies, and other creepy crawlies you might find out in the garden. And Charlotte wanted to chat about the butterflies we looked after in the summer. All great!

Not quite sure what we're going to do with the final products, but we very much enjoyed making them!

The craft box is a subscription service which arrives fortnightly, and is just under £7 a box. I think this is ok value, particularly if your child likes crafty projects but you don’t have lots of space at home to store lots of craft materials. For us, I think fortnightly is too frequent, and brings the monthly cost up to around £14, which is a bit too much for my liking. Fancy giving it a free trial? Just head over to the website, but remember to cancel your subscription once you get your free box or you’ll start being charged.

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